C.S. Challinor - Murder on the Moor (A Rex Graves Mystery)

Murder on the Moor: A Rex Graves Mystery 2011 by C. S. Challinor.

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First e-book edition 2011

E-book ISBN: 9780738729398

Book design by Donna Burch

Cover design by Kevin R. Brown

Cover photo illustration Kevin R.Brown; Cottage iStockphoto.com/Lee Rogers; Scottish Highlands iStockphoto.com/Matthew Dixon

Editing by Connie Hill

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Cast of Main Characters

Rex Graves Scottish barrister and amateur sleuth, new and proud owner of Gleneagle Lodge

Chief Inspector Dalgerry of Central Scotland Police, who heads up the Moor Murders investigation

Detective Inspector Strickler Dalgerrys skeptical subordinate

Detective Sergeant Dawes Stricklers younger partner

HouseGuests

Helen dArcy Rex Graves current love interest

Cuthbert Farquharson trigger-happy laird

Estelle Farquharson Cuthberts snobby, gossipy wife

Alistair Frazer Rex Graves dashing and enigmatic colleague

Hamish Allerdice local hotelier with wandering hands

Shona Allerdice Hamishs furtive wife

Donnie Allerdice son with learning disabilities

Flora Allerdice Donnies devoted and tragic sister

Rob Roy Beardsley zealous freelance journalist

Moira Wilcox Rex Graves previous love interest

Its a pig in a poke, the first McCallum decreed, shaking his head dubiously at the cast-iron radiator in the guest bedroom of Rexs converted hunting lodge.

Aye, agreed McCallums equally stout younger brother. Ye should hae switched to contemporary models, he told Rex, like we said when ye first purchased this place. These old radiators retain more heat, but if thisun continues to leak, youll end up wi a rotten floorboard. The radiator is so corroded it could come off the wall and fall onto somebodys heed.

I like these radiators, Rex protested. They have character.

Ye canna let emotion get in the way of good sense, the first McCallum chided, looking at Rex as though he were a clueless twit and not a preeminent Scottish barrister. Now, it can be fixedif yer heart is set on it, but it will cost ye.

Aye, seconded the brother. Parts are dear. Not many of these radiators left around the country.

Why cant you just solder the damn thing?

With exaggerated patience, the elder McCallum launched into an ABC of plumbing basics.

How long to fix it? Rex finally asked. I have guests arriving this afternoon.

Och, it canna be done afore then, the elder McCallum exclaimed. Yell have to keep the pan there to collect the water until we can get back sometime next week.

This was not reassuring, especially the sometime next week part. The local labor force adhered to the typical Highland attitude toward work: It would get done when desire for food or whisky absolutely drove them to the necessity of it, and not before.

Now, take heed, the younger brother said. The leak will likely get worse, so I suggest ye get a bigger pan.

Well take fifty pounds now for the consultation, the other said. Ta verra much, squire, he added as he pocketed the money in greedy anticipation of an afternoon at the pub.

Rex was now anxious to get the two men out of the lodge before Helen returned from the village shop and saw the mud they had tracked up the stairs on their work boots. She was as industrious and house-proud as a badger and had spent the past two days sprucing up the place in preparation for the housewarming party.

He felt less enthusiastic about the proceedings. The whole point of the lodge, after all, had been for them to spend time together by themselves. A stroke of luck had brought him to this property near Inverness, a couple of hours drive north of Edinburgh, where he lived.

It might seem odd and slightly suspect to some people that a mature man would live at home with an aging, if still sprightly parent, but the arrangement had made sense when Rex lost his wife to cancer. He had not wanted his son, then fifteen, coming home from school to an empty house, and so he had moved back in with his mother. Now that Campbell was away at college in Florida, Rex felt an increasing desire to spread his wings.

After mopping up the mess on the stairs, he wandered down the path to wait for Helen at the gate. The stone lodge stood sideways to the loch, which at first sight seemed odd, but in fact was quite logical. Logic always counted more for Rex than aesthetics and may have been the reason the Victorian hunting lodge had not been snapped up sooner.

The front doorat the side of the housefaced north toward the village of Gleneagle. The conservatory built onto the south side hoarded any sun the thrifty Highland summer deigned to bestow within its glass walls and looked upon a garden carpeted with bluebells and hedged by late-flowering rhododendrons and azaleas.

The best view, though, was reserved for the living room, whose large windows opened onto the loch. This is where the logic of the architect back in 1845 came into play, for Loch Lown comprised only a narrow body of water, not much wider than the breadth of the house, and by positioning the lodge in this perpendicular manner, the most important rooms embraced a long perspective of the lake.

Gleneagle Lodge was the only residence on the mile-long loch, which had once belonged to the laird of Gleneagle Castle, now a tattered ruin at the top of the hill in the direction of the village. Parcels of the estate had been successively sold off to honor the debts of the dissolute Fraser family, distant relations of the famous clan of that name, until the grounds had shrunk to the confines of the four-bedroom lodge, loch, and several hundred acres of hill and glen, currently in the proud possession of Rex Graves, Queens Counsel.